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“I’d love to get her back,” Kayleigh says. “I just have no idea how.”
Delight tiptoes through my chest.Yes. This is what I’ve been waiting for.
“Do you still have friends there? Someone who hates Lucie?”
She nods. “Yeah, but what good is that?”
I smile, tapping my lip. “I don’t know yet. But I’ll figure it out.”
If Beck was watching, he’d make some evil queen comment and I’d laugh.
On second thought, if Beck was watching, he’d just be very disappointed in me. And fuck Beck, anyway. I’m disappointed in him too.
17
BECK
My mother’s love for me was legendary. Her friends still mention the way she showed off pictures and reports cards and trophies to anyone in her vicinity. I couldn’t enter the room without her trying to feed me or hug me or ruffle my hair.
I dropped out of school when she was dying. Her last words to me—slurred by pain and the steady drip of morphine, too detached to realize she was in a hospital—were, “Let me make you something to eat.”
Her bias toward me was legendary as well. Heaven help the teacher who sent home a critical note, or any bar patron who suggested I took after my piece-of-shit dad. She thought I could do no wrong, but even she wouldn’t approve of what’s happening here, between me and my best friend’s wife.
I go to the backyard and work out longer and harder than usual, dragging a weighted sled across the yard, my head too full of thoughts I need to be rid of. I chop wood, dig a hole and refill it, carry sandbags from one end of the yard to the other.
But the moment I stop, I’m remembering the incident in the kitchen—her tight against me, my mouth so fucking close to her ear, her ass pressed to my cock, our breathing erratic.
She will never fucking admit it, but she wants me too. She doesn’t evenhaveto admit it. I saw the goose bumps climbing over her neck when I grabbed her. I saw her nipples turn diamond-hard in a second flat. Jesus, the things I’d have done to her in that moment if she’d just fucking let me. And that’s the problem here…I keep hoping she will.
I really need it to stop. I just don’t know how.
* * *
Early Saturday morning,on four hours of sleep, I meet Liam and Harrison at Long Point to surf. Once upon a time, this was a daily event and required no communication at all. Now multiple texts are exchanged and several alterations are made to the plan, which starts late because I was at the bar until two and will end early because Harrison has to get into work. I’m still waiting for the part of adulthood that lives up to the hype.
It’s seven by the time we’re in the water. We’re no longer here enough for anyone to consider us locals and the teenage punks at the break are already getting territorial as we start to paddle out.
“We’ve turned into the old guys we used to hate,” I grouse.
“Yeah, and just like the old guys we used to hate, I have no problem beating the shit out of anyone who gets in my way,” Liam replies.
I groan. Being six-five means I don’t get in a lot of fights, but they go pretty fucking badly for the other guy if I do. “Don’t get us in a fight, dude,” I reply, glancing back at him as my arm does a long sweep through the water. “Harrison can’t bail us out of jail if he’s in there with us.”
“From what I hear, you’re the only one of us I might be bailing out of jail,” Harrison says with a quiet laugh, catching up on my right. “Heard you and Caleb got into it pretty bad.”
I raise a brow. Harrison’s a good guy—he’s kept a lot of shit to himself, on my behalf—but I’m not in the mood for a lecture.
“Don’t,” I warn.
“I hope you know what you’re doing,” he says. “That situation…is tough. And no woman is worth losing friends over.”
“You wouldn’t be willing to lose friends over Audrey?”
He frowns, the only sign of his discomfort. “She’s my wife. That’s different.”
“And he’s already about to lose friends over his wife,” Liam chimes in. He glances at Harrison. “Tell Beck about the move.”
“Nothing’s certain yet,” Harrison says, frowning at Liam before he turns to me.
